Is Storage Necessary For Renewable Energy?

mdsolar writes Physicist and energy expert Amory Lovins, chief scientist at The Rocky Mountain Institute, recently released a video in which he claims that renewable energy can meet all of our energy needs without the need for a fossil fuel or nuclear baseload generation. There's nothing unusual about that — many people have made that claim — but he also suggests that this can be done without a lot of grid-level storage. Instead, Lovins describes a "choreography" between supply and demand, using predictive computer models models to anticipate production and consumption, and intelligent routing to deliver power where it's needed. This "energy dance," combined with advances in energy efficiency, will allow us to meet all of our energy needs without sacrificing reliability.

Comments

Expert??

[Mr D from 63]

This guy is clearly no energy expert. He should have consulted an electrical engineer familiar with grid behavior and transmission & distribution engineering before creating this over-simplified explanation. He completely ignores the importance of local load differences, and seems to assume there is a loss-less, instantaneous transfer of energy across the national grid, both transmission and distribution channels, with no limitations.

He also doesn't get that even at a local level things like AC compressors are already averaged out and that delaying the timing of starts really makes almost no difference at the neighborhood level, much less a town level.

Its nice to completely ignore realities like overall cost. Its nice to not realize that industrial areas have a significantly different profile than urban areas, and that rural areas are vastly different. Its nice to call yourself and energy expert and get submitted to slashdot by those that believe you just because they want to, or because you fall in line with their agenda.

Credible experts are people who understand what they know, and what they don't know.

Re:Expert??

[angel'o'sphere]

Unfortunately Amory Lovins is right and you are wrong. I did not know that a guy who worked 40 years in the energy field and is a Physicist, does ot count as an expert.

However as long as we are not even able to produce so much energy via renewables it does not matter if we reorganize the grid for it or introduce storage or both ...

... that delaying the timing of starts really makes almost no difference at the neighborhood level, much less a town level.

It makes an immense difference if it is used to balance the grid. If I as a grid operator can activate an AC that would jump on in 5 mins anyway *right now* I can put my excess power to us, without the need to power down a conventional plant or without the need to store the excess power.

Credible experts are people who understand what they know, and what they don't know.
That is also true for a /. poster :D you seem not to know what you don't know.

Re:Expert??

[Trogre]

Gravitational potential energy cannot be used as an energy source.

Several hundred million people who use hydroelectric dams as their primary power source disagree.